To be changed

I am but a foolish girl

Alone and lost in a biting world

Its sickly sentiments smile at me

Unearthing wide grins filled with teeth
I swallow sand to drown the flames

That melt away myself within 

“Become an upgrade of yourself”

You cannot let the voices win…

Ignore them, bury them, burn them alive 

Sacrifice their gods under sacred skies

Dance on the graves of the cool and the calm

Pull apart their stitches, unravel their psalms

Find the hideous beasts within

Then enter God’s home and beckon them in. 

Lord Jesus keep reminding me

That I am not a word;

Nay, not even a sentence

Or a collection of worried breath.
Say it to me again and again

Tell me the worth I have within

I am finding it hard to focus

When the world costs so much to be in. 
Not ‘Christian’ or ‘human’ or ‘lover’ or ‘friend’,

Not ‘person’ or ‘purpose’ or ‘pathetic’ or ‘pretty’. 

I am not words, I am not phrases

More so than ‘me’ 

I am an example of the one true King’s grace and majesty. 

Human

Please do not think you know me

Do not think you can read my eyes. 

I am far more wild and cold; your familiar manner I despise

No man could ever know my heart

For I’ve sent it far away; it resides in icy barricades beyond a frozen sea
No one will melt the frost

No one will touch my thoughts

I curl my lip in bitter distaste

All you know is my ivory face. 
Welcome to the savage realm where blood runs black like venom

I tear apart my own veins in disheartening disease

I need to breathe, I’m choking, please

Step far away from me. 

To say the words

When will I cease being able to repress

The feelings I imprison, I do not redress

Your heart when you spill it like ink in my hands

I stare at my fingers bleeding your love like sand 

And wonder how long it will last. 

luxury

Oh, forgive me Father, for I have sinned

I am small and tired and free

And I’ve let this castle imprison me;

And sadden the joy of life I had.

pottery

faulted
fractured
broken bits; human beings wonder if
we’ll ever be fixed enough to seem
like heartache is not unraveling
the seams we stitch to break our bonds
funny how we tie those knots
specifically to free ourselves;
and yet the prison remains.

we are cracked and chipped like pottery
the lumpy turtle kilned in third grade;
Pork Chop the pig named by pigtails
and all the in between.
And yet more perfect still are we
than over-fired pottery;
humans were made by divine hands
so no matter how we crush ourselves
we can always be repaired.

The fight

What suffering could ever lead to light?

Why not rip the darkness to shreds and let it burn apart

Why not kill the sickly beasts and let the Lion reign again

I am sick of Your children wandering off, my sisters and brothers, lost

To the eternal night, either slaughtered or tortured or left to rot

Their hearts full of the dark they once ceaselessly fought. 

Spare me this sorrow and spare them this life

Full of distraught and terror and hate

Choking on oxygen riddled with poisons

Missing the clean air of grace. 
You hold the power, the only truth left

To wipe out transgressions and sickness and death

Oh Child, you say to me, can you not see?

That’s exactly what I’m doing, and I start to breathe

It’s starting with you,

It’s starting with me?

Go show them the light, they must come to me freely. 

All at once I understand

You are fighting the dark, you are holding my hand

I lost sight for a moment when the shadows crowded in

But I remember again; you were slain that we would be forgiven, and live!

That evil would perish instead.